BBC College of Journalism Blog - A vigorous and robust discussion about journalism from every perspective.

It's that time of year again - the new Media Guardian's top 100. Like all lists, it's mostly fun and partly social/cultural commentary ... and even those critical of the whole idea of lists inevitably find themselves drawn to arguing about who's in and who's not.

I was in it briefly, rising to the dizzying height of 41 - the place occupied by Ofcom's Ed Richards this year - slipping back to 45 - this year occupied by BBC Vision's Jana Bennett - before sliding out altogether. Clearly, the list is not what it was.

The striking feature of the 2010 list that certainly does reflect the real world is the preponderance of platform builders: in top spot - predictably enough - Apple's Steve Jobs; followed closely by Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google. Skip two - more on them in a moment - and you hit Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, at five, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, at seven.

The media manichaeism that is News Corp/BBC is well reflected, too. BBC Director General Mark Thompson is at three (down one) and News Corp Chairman and Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch at four (up two ... leapfrogging Murdoch fils, James, who's slipped from three to eight). Elsewhere, the top 100 is sprinkled with News Corp or BSkyB executives and their BBC counterparts.

Depressingly, the top-placed content producer is Mr Simon Cowell, at six ... though presumably he's there as much for his influence on the entertainment business as on popular culture.

For those of us who think news - in the traditional sense - still matters, the highest placed newspaper editor is Paul Dacre, at 13 ... and there's not another journalist 'til Helen Boaden (BBC), at 21, and Nick Robinson (BBC), at 26 - and there are only three other journalists in the top 50.

Of course, lists like this are a function of the committee that draws them up - and you can argue with its choices here. But what's probably unarguable is that the power of platforms - whether physical, social media or multi-use - is now greater than that of the content they carry.

And that's worth pausing to think about.